Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/97

82 steep little town, with a small fortress-like castle, and beyond, the white serrated peaks of the Pyrenees, full of robbers then, and of bears and wolves, with all round, in the lower hills, villages, where lived those poor and swarthy peasants whose language Margaret could not understand. For some years she did not love this harp, foreign, mountain country; she stayed there but for a month or two in the year, fleeing gladly back to Fontainebleau, where her brother was turning the great hunting-lodge of the French kings into a summer-palace more magnificent than dreams.

For home was still to Margaret in France. She had no children in her Castles of Béarn. Her little son had died soon after birth. Her daughter, Jeanne, was not quite two years old when Francis placed the poor solemn baby in a castle of her own at Plessis-les-Tours, afraid to leave her with her parents, lest Henry d'Albret should betroth her to a prince of Spain. Margaret was childless, and her husband was unfaithful. Still, after a few years' marriage, her thoughts began to turn towards her distant subjects of Béarn.

For there was no great need of her at the Court of France. Leonor had come from Spain, bringing back the two little princes; but she came home to find her husband fickle and unfaithful, and no disappointment is so embittered as that of the disillusioned idealist. The ardent, chivalrous Leonor was a disappointed woman. Still, she had a certain hold upon her husband, though infinitely less than belonged to pretty Anne de Pisseleu, now Duchess d'Estampes and the King's acknowledged mistress. Francis had these two women; Louisa had her son, her political ambition, and her grandchildren; the very children themselves had a new mother. So Margaret began to listen to the impatience of her